Wizards.exe team members Rohan Dewan, Ishaan Oberoi, Devasena Sitaram, and Arjun Oberoi show their winning robot and the trophies they earned in recent international competition. PHOTO BY SUZANNE POLLAK There was no magic involved when the Wizards.exe came home from Detroit with the First Tech Challenge World Championship Inspire Award in hand, along with their robot, which took 10th out of 6,000 teams from around the globe.

Eleven Montgomery County teenagers have been working diligently since the start of the school year to build a robot that could differentiate colors, sense distances, and pick up cardboard blocks and then assemble them into a pattern – all within two-and-a-half minutes.

Ishaan Oberoi, a 10th-grader at Richard Montgomery High School, and his younger brother, Arjun Oberoi, an eighth-grader at Takoma Park Middle School, were in the car several years ago when they spotted a billboard for a robotics competition.

It sounded interesting, and “there was nothing much like this in school,” so the boys joined, said Ishaan. Their father, Pankaj Oberoi, agreed to be their coach, and they have been going strong ever since.

SILVER SPRING – On Sept. 17, Sarah Manchester and her friends and family gathered at McGinty’s Pub to watch “Wheel of Fortune.” It was Teacher’s week and Manchester, 42, was a contestant. After hearing about the show taping in May, Manchester’s friends were about to learn how much she won: $1 million.